


rockabye

by thebetterbina



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, Gen, Inspired by Music, Irondad, Lots of Angst, Mentions of Cancer, Minor Character Death, Not Canon Compliant, Peter Parker Calls Tony Stark "Dad", Sad, everyone is fucking sad, in which case peter is actually tonys son, like just ALOT, peters mom dies of cancer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:01:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23257360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebetterbina/pseuds/thebetterbina
Summary: “I’m willing to pay for all your medical bills and needs, I can get you a private room with the best doctors the world can offer.”She returns that sentiment with a scoff, but it sounds snide and weak. “I’m dying, Mister Stark,” she starts firmly, but the next words are softer as she says them. “I … need you to adopt Peter.”Peter watches them shovel the first spade of dirt onto her coffin.A father he's never known up to that point tells him it's time to go.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 6
Kudos: 132





	rockabye

**Author's Note:**

> proofread done by my wife, [liz ♡](https://twitter.com/lizardayo)
> 
> i played "rockabye" on loop as i wrote this, crying my eyes out. i wrote this months ago and it was meant to be a multi-chapter fic but i stopped after this part and at this point i just decided to post it. leave some love if you wanna see more?

_ She tells him—  
"Your life ain't gonna be nothing like my life.  
You're gonna grow and have a good life." _

* * *

The baby boy she gives birth to, she names Peter.

Biblical, to honour her mother who’d been a devout Christian and had always kept traditional names in the family—mostly sentimental—but her boy with his chubby cheeks and big aquamarine eyes that twinkle like little jewels  _ fits _ the name, Peter. She tests the name on her shaking lips and weeps when he gives his first gurgle. The midwife and nurse give her space, and for a brief moment she forgets the world; now it's just her and her little adorable baby boy.

Noah had never considered her life becoming this way; she’d been young and that was perhaps her downfall—only daughter to two loving parents who’d died just before she went off to college. Somewhere along the lines the debts became too much of a burden and fell through the cracks of a system that was supposed to help the unfortunate.

Her college days saw her at her best, and she was beautiful—dark black hair and twinkling sky blue eyes. Her beauty had started her off in the sugar baby business.

Her sugar baby lifestyle ended with a gala, Tony Stark, a one night stand, and a pregnancy.

She’d debated telling the billionaire—knowing her life could have been settled if she’d just told the damn man she was carrying his child. But the fear had been there. The fear that a billionaire out to clear his name would do something drastic ... she’d heard it all before anyway; she’d heard stories of girls dead because they tried to seal the deal with marriage (but it never worked out that way, did it?).

Noah’s smart—she always has been, one-night stand notwithstanding—and she knows better than to go blabbering anywhere and decides to keep everything a secret. It’s a painful, bitter secret, one that haunts her in her waking moments and creeps along in her dreams, always with the fear of wondering how her life is going to turn out when he—she knows it’s a he, can feel it in her bones the baby in her belly is a boy—comes into the world.

Then he’s here, and she suddenly feels as if she can take on the world. 

Of course, she can. She has to.

It’s hard, not many places willing to employ a mother with a newborn, but she has friends—the precious few of them who are willing to have Noah over and make sure for the first few, crucial months that mother and baby are taken care of all before she takes leave, never wanting to burden them. It’s hard—a tough life—but looking at Peter with his growing nubs of wriggling fingers, she pushes through it all; her parents raised her with nothing but love and she’d promised she’d return it tenfold to her baby boy.

She thinks her parents would’ve loved him.

Peter’s incoherent coo agrees with her.

She makes the decision to begin a career as a stripper.

There’s a stigma around it—she knows it all too well—but the money on the table is tempting, and she knows she’s going to need more money when her boy gets older. She needs to make the money while her body is still young, supple, and while the gazes of men still latch onto her because to them she’s nothing but a pretty body to lust after.

(She’d find a new sugar daddy, but most of them were looking for college girls to sponsor; not a mother with an infant on her hip.)

The girls at  _ Eden _ are nice enough, all there for each other in a strange solidarity put together by Mamma Garcia—they actually volunteer to look after Peter, and Noah has to wince a little at the fact she’s going to have to raise her baby in a strip club for a while. However, they have a strict policy and they’re all protective bears when it comes to Peter so Noah thinks it might just work. They’re going to be okay, Peter and her.

Peter grows steadily, well-fed on the bonuses Mamma Garcia gives and the girls sometimes chip in with, and Noah works hard at her job and bears any of the unpleasantness it brings. By Peter’s first year he’s already happily babbling “mamma”, much to the delight of the club owner; he’s started a few words already and soon they’re all agreeing that Peter is probably a genius.

They never ask about the father, Noah never tells.

The rickety TV the bar owns sometimes shows the man; he’d gotten the name ‘Iron Man’ at some point. Truthfully Noah is glad; while the one night stand she’d spent with him was sexually gratifying she hadn’t missed the forlorn look so carefully shadowed behind dark brown eyes. But it hadn’t been her place to ask, and when the beautiful assistant had politely told her the way out she had taken it with a nod and a quiet thank you.

That was the last time she’d ever spoken to Tony Stark.

Her times off, nowadays, are always spent with Peter, holding him close with him swathed in blankets and his little face peeking out from under the material—these private moments are important for Noah and everyone knows; they’re nice enough to give her room and a wide berth to spend as many hours as she can of her break time to just cuddle her baby and pretend she’s a normal mother. But she’s not and she knows it; she’d never deny reality.

In the quiet of the morning, as the sun begins to rise, she kisses his little fingers and promises him a better life—one filled with love and where the world would never touch him.

Peter is six when she finds out.

Cancer. Stage four. She’s beyond saving and can’t begin to imagine touching the money she’d so carefully saved up for all these years for Peter. She can’t do that to him.

She cries and the girls are there for her. Peter is  _ six _ and he doesn’t understand why his mom and all the pretty big sisters and Mamma are crying and he’s crying too—

Noah lies in the hospital bed when Mamma makes the decision.

She’d been the only person to know, Peter had turned two and she had suspected something when it was obvious Noah’s attention never wandered when the subject of Tony Stark came up—Noah had told her everything then, teary-eyed and glowing from the moonlight, and Mamma had kept the secret under the tightest lock and key.

Mamma Garcia draws the line at cancer and a soon-to-be orphaned boy.

Tony Stark arrives, and it’s with all the flash and pomp of a man of his wealth; Noah’s too sickly to protest, to cry out when the man comes in and Peter looks fearful if anything, clutching onto her bedsheets with his big, wide eyes scared of who this man was and what he’d be capable of doing.

“You said he was mine.”

“ _ Mine _ .” Noah corrects, weakly coughing before Garcia comes to stop her.

The man shifts from foot to foot, clearly uncomfortable. Peter is still by her side, watching fearfully but always glancing back to Noah and asking if his mom is alright. He’s grown up a little, now, and the features are beginning to show: the tuft of dark brown hair on his head isn’t hers, clearly, same as the beginnings of a sharp nose and bone structure. The eyes, though, are hers, in those same sparkling hues her father had and about which he had never stopped boasting that they made them part of some lost, royal lineage.

More than ever, she wished her life was that of someone with that kind of standing, someone that could protect herself from this inevitable future. 

“I’m willing to pay for all your medical bills and needs, I can get you a private room with the best doctors the world can offer.”

She returns that sentiment with a scoff, but it sounds snide and weak. “I’m dying, Mister Stark,” she starts firmly, but the next words are softer as she says them. “I … need you to adopt Peter.”

He looks taken aback by the request, stance going a little unsure. “That’s—that’s drastic—”

“I need you to adopt Peter. He has your blood. Test him if you have to.” Finally some composure reigns; there's firmness in her voice she hasn’t found in months. There’s a note of finality to it that even has Garcia clenching her fists. 

“... Okay. I’ll—I’ll see what I can do.”

Those few are the only words she gets, but that’s good enough for her. The man leaves, giving the trio some space, with Garcia tutting the whole while in angry Spanish. Peter is still by her side, and she slowly runs fingers through his tousled locks and kisses his forehead. 

The man does try to make her life a little better and moves her to a private clinic with personal doctors and round-the-clock nurses. Peter, she still sees often but Garcia and the girls. .. less these days. The weakness is making her numb and tired most of the time, and she feels awful with every choked sob she can hear Peter give nightly, by her side. Still, she forges on; she can’t leave him with too many terrible memories and does her best to tell him stories when the pain burns through her lungs. She does it to see the last few smiles her baby can give, all big grins on a face she’s never going to be able to watch grow up.

Noah dies two months later.

* * *

Peter watches them lower her casket into the ground.

It’s a quiet affair, his mom hadn’t known many people to begin with—the familiar faces of all the women he’s grown up around are stricken with grief and stained with tears. Mamma’s familiar hand is a comfort on his shoulder, it’s grounding to the numbness he feels that vaguely resembles a discomforting tingle to the tips of his fingers. The suit feels foreign on his skin, tailored to his body and comfortable; his … father had provided it.

He tests the word on his tongue. Scrunches his face up. 

His eyes wander from watching the dirt being piled onto her grave to Tony Stark—the man’s face is unreadable, but he’s watching Peter with slow consideration.

Mamma gives him a soft peck on his cheek, and he says his goodbyes to the girls. Mister Stark had told him he’d be living with him now, and Mamma had told him he might not be able to see them as often anymore. Peter chokes back another sob threatening to bubble up, he’d been so well behaved the whole funeral but he can’t help but cry again; he’s losing another piece of her, another piece of what made up her memory and he’s going to be raised by some stranger.

“I will always love you,  _ mi cielito _ , and maybe when you’re older—come see your Mamma and sisters—yes?”

“ _ Sí _ .” He mumbles his assent, watching as they walk off in their gaggle, all giving glances back but then there’s another hand on his shoulder that’s  _ unfamiliar _ and he jumps.

“Woah—sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.” His voice is foreign to Peter, a low baritone so unlike the pitched squeals and giggles he’d grown used to. His own mother’s voice was lilting on her best days, soothing and lulling him to sleep; he’s never going to hear her again.

“We—we have to go okay?” The man sounds a little unsure like he’s not used to comforting someone, but he glances back and there’s a car waiting for him and Peter nods. Ignoring the hand offered and trotting obediently to the black Mercedes as the driver— _ Happy _ —dutifully opens it up for him. Peter mutters thanks and climbs in, eyes cast to the window as he feels the dip of another presence coming in beside him.

The drive to Stark Tower is quiet and awkward.

Peter doesn’t have much to say, he feels the void in his chest that comes with loss so acutely he doesn’t think he’d be able to muster anything decent to talk about. The weather is gloomy across New York, grey skies blanketing the city in a depressing hue. He counts the raindrops that patter against the glass, counts the buildings they pass until it becomes a blur and Happy finally announces softly they’ve arrived. Peter makes no move to exit, he can’t exactly open the doors with how small his fingers are.

“Happy, leave us for a bit.”

The man dutifully does so.

“Kid, for all it’s worth—I didn’t know you both were out there. I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

The silence that follows is deafening.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm active [on my Twitter](https://twitter.com/therealconnor60)! (´,,•ω•,,)♡


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